The night train to Kyiv

After several months in the UK, the lady sleeping on the opposite bunk on the night train to Kyiv told me she had had enough.

Welcomed under the Homes for Ukraine scheme into a small English village, she had watched as the thermostat in the house was turned down and then turned down again.

‘Finally they set it to 15 degrees’, she said. ‘I know they were trying to save money but for all the water bottles I used I just couldn’t keep warm. I decided life back in Kyiv had to be better.’

An hour before our conversation I had arrived at Lviv station in western Ukraine. I sat on an ancient curved wooden chair in a barely-lit waiting hall. Near me were three men in uniform holding Kalashnikov assault rifles. They were yawning. There were no health-and-safety announcements, very little bustle or even chat. When I ascended to the platforms the light was so low that other passengers seemed to emerge out of the dark only a few feet away.